Angels Relaxing Torrid Pace

Their 23-year-old rookie pitcher left Saturday’s game because of a tight muscle in his left arm--and that was the stress-free news.

Their manager was a little tense about an 8-3 loss to the Oakland A’s.

Their veteran first baseman called it another baseball game.

No, the Angels are not going gently into the all-star break, resting on a first half that has them in first place. Losing for the sixth time in eight games sent some Angel players running for the clubhouse exit.

Maybe it was to join the 43,571 fans for the postgame Fourth of July show. Then again, maybe it was to escape the fireworks inside. After winning 22 games in June, the Angels are meandering into the break.

Manager Terry Collins thought the intensity was missing. First baseman Cecil Fielder said there would be days like this. And pitcher Jarrod Washburn? Everything was fine, even though he left after five innings because of “tightness” in a forearm muscle.

Where to start?

“You know you are going to have bad days,” Collins said. “You still play hard. You run every ball out.

“If you’re fatigued, come in here and tell me. We have good players on the bench. You can take a day off.”

Losing four of six to the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants was one thing. They are fighting it out in the National League West. But losing two more to the A’s--a collection of players with their best years ahead of them (Ben Grieve), behind them (Bip Roberts, Rickey Henderson) and way behind them (Kevin Mitchell)--may be another matter.

Or is it?

“That’s baseball,” Fielder said. “We just got our [butts] whooped. You take it like a man. You can’t talk about the Oakland A’s as a team that can’t beat us. They can. No team is going to win 162 games. We know we’re not going to win 22 games every month.

“I don’t buy that about the intensity level. Everyone is playing hard every game. Sometimes you get whooped.”

Grieve drove in three runs--giving him 55 RBIs for the season--and Henderson two. Roberts had an RBI and scored a run. Mitchell drove in one run. The A’s broke open a 4-2 game with a four-run ninth inning, discouraging any comeback thoughts by the Angels, who have 23 come-from-behind victories this season, 12 in June.

“We kept thinking, ‘Hey, we’re going to get ‘em,’ ” designated hitter Tim Salmon said.

Said Collins: “I tell you what, sometimes you got to get started before the seventh inning.

“We were creating things, making things happen, during that streak. We didn’t do that.”

It wasn’t as if the A’s didn’t offer up a sacrifice. Starter Mike Oquist entered the game with the worst road earned-run averaged in the American League (10.15).

But Oquist didn’t give up a hit through three innings. Salmon and Fielder had run-scoring doubles on back-to-back pitches in the fourth, giving the Angels a 2-1 lead. It was the virtually the extent of their offense. Oquist settled down and finished with a season-high nine strikeouts in 6 2/3 innings.

Washburn was gone after five innings, taking the first loss of his career. He seemed to breeze through three innings, giving up only one hit, but said his arm never got loose. Pitching coach Marcel Lachemann made two visits to the mound in the fifth.

The Angels have a hair-trigger on such concerns these days, having already lost starters Allen Watson, Jack McDowell and Ken Hill to injuries.

“Jarrod’s velocity was down five miles per hour in the fifth, so we pulled him,” Collins said. “He’s too good a prospect to take a chance.”

Washburn said he has experienced similar tightness in past seasons.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” said Washburn, who is 4-1. “Every now and then I have a game where I just can’t get loose.”

Besides, as tightness went, Washburn’s arm was nothing.

“We need to come back and play a good game tomorrow,” Salmon said. “We don’t want to go into the break with this taste in our mouth.”

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In the popularity poll that is all-star voting, fans batted about .500 this year. C8